Global effort to end the scourge of infantile paralysis took many risks

8:04 AM,
Oct. 28, 2013

Dr. Jonas Salk, right, administers an injection to a boy in Pittsbrugh in 1954.

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It is difficult to remember the fear that a virus, poliomyelitis, struck into the hearts of Americans during the early 1950s. Its impact on children, which led to it being called infantile paralysis, sent helpless chills through every community as springtime approached.

Parents learned the "belly button" test, a simple question they asked of their children who went to bed with a cold and awoke fevered and weak the next morning. They asked, "Can you lift your head and look at your belly button?"

In the summer of 1952, 58,000 children (nearly triple the historical annual average of cases in the ...